IT Infrastructure and

Network Overview
IT Infrastructure
Shared technology resources that provide the platform for the firm’s
specific information system applications
Includes investment in hardware, software, and services, such as consulting,
education, and training, that are shared across the entire firm or across entire
business units in the firm
Includes a set of firmwide services and composed of both human and technical
capabilities
IT INFRASTRUCTURE: HW
Mobile Digital Platform
iPhone and Android smartphones have taken on many functions of PCs
Also includes small, lightweight netbooks optimized for wireless communication and
Internet access, tablet computers such as the iPad, and digital e-book readers such as
Amazon’s Kindle with some web access capabilities
Smartphones and tablet computers are increasingly used for business
computing as well as for consumer applications
Success of mobile platforms depends in large part on the quantity and
the quality of the apps they provide → apps tie the customer to a specific
hardware platform: as the user adds more and more apps to his or her
mobile phone, the cost of switching to a competing mobile platform rises
IT INFRASTRUCTURE: SW
Software packages and enterprise software
A prewritten commercially available set of software programs that
eliminates the need for a firm to write its own software programs for
certain functions (e.g., SAP and Oracle-PeopleSoft)
Provide a single, integrated, worldwide software system for firms at a
cost much less than they would pay if they developed it themselves
Can support the primary business processes of a firm worldwide from
warehousing, customer relationship management, and supply chain
management to finance and human resources
IT INFRASTRUCTURE: SW
Software outsourcing
Enables a firm to contract custom software development or
maintenance of existing legacy programs to outside firms, which often
operate offshore in low-wage areas of the world
Service Level Agreement (SLA): a formal contract between customers and their
service providers that defines the specific responsibilities of the service provider and
the level of service expected by the customer → SLAs typically specify the nature
and level of services provided, criteria for performance measurement, support
options, provisions for security and disaster recovery, hardware and software
ownership and upgrades, customer support, billing, and conditions for terminating
the agreement
IT INFRASTRUCTURE: SW
Mashups
Individual users and entire companies mix and match software
components to create their own customized applications and to share
information with others
Idea is to take different sources and produce a new work that is greater
than the sum of its parts
ZipRealty uses Google Maps and data provided by online real estate database
Zillow.com to display a complete list of multiple listing service (MLS) real estate
listings for any ZIP code specified by the user
IT INFRASTRUCTURE: SW
Apps
Small specialized software programs (application software) that are
designed for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets
Are downloaded from app stores like Apple’s App Store and Google Play
Provide a streamlined non-browser pathway for users to perform a
number of tasks, ranging from reading the newspaper to shopping,
searching, personal health monitoring, playing games, and buying
Increasingly used by managers as gateways to their firm’s enterprise
systems
IT INFRASTRUCTURE
IT Consumerization
New information technology that first emerges in the consumer
market spreads into business organizations → has occurred because
personally-owned IT is as capable and cost-effective as its enterprise
equivalents
Includes not only mobile personal devices (BYOD – Bring Your Own
Device) but also business uses of software services that originated in
the consumer marketplace as well, such as Google and Yahoo search,
Gmail, Google Apps, Dropbox, and even Facebook and Twitter
CHALLENGES
Dealing with Platform and Infra Change
Scalability: ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a
large number of users without breaking down
How can a firm remain flexible if investments in IT infrastructure are fixed-cost?
How well does the infrastructure scale?
Will require new policies and procedures for managing Mobile and Cloud computing
platforms → need to inventory all of their mobile devices in business use and develop
policies and tools for tracking, updating, and securing them and for controlling the data
and applications that run on them
Will need to fashion new contractual arrangements with remote vendors → make sure
that the hardware and software for critical applications are always available when
needed and that they meet corporate standards for information security
CHALLENGES
Management and Governance
Who controls IT infrastructure?
How should IT department be organized?
Centralized: central IT department makes decisions
Decentralized: business unit IT departments make own decisions
How are costs allocated between divisions, departments?
CHALLENGES
IT Investment Decisions
How much should the firm spend on infrastructure?
Should the firm purchase and maintain its own IT infrastructure
components or rent them from external suppliers?
Total Cost of Ownership
Actual cost of owning technology resources
Includes the original cost of acquiring and installing hardware and software as
well as ongoing administration costs for hardware and software upgrades,
maintenance, technical support, training, and even utility and real estate costs
for running and housing the technology
THE CLOUD
Virtualization Types
Storage virtualization
Pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices into what appears to
be a single storage device that is managed from a central console
Network virtualization
Combines the available resources in a network by splitting the network load into
manageable parts, each of which can be assigned (or reassigned) to a particular server
on the network
Hardware virtualization
Use of software to emulate hardware or a total computer environment other than the
one the software is actually running in
Allows a piece of hardware to run multiple operating system images at once (VM)
THE CLOUD
Strategic Issues
Which workloads should be exported to the cloud?
Which set of standards to follow for cloud computing?
How to resolve issues of privacy and security as things move out to the cloud?
How departments or business units will get new IT resources. Should they help
themselves, or should IT remain a gatekeeper?
Vendor Management Issues
Defining and policing service-level agreements (SLAs) with vendors
SLA: a negotiated agreement between a company and service provider that can be a
legally binding contract or an informal contract → goal is not building the best SLA terms,
but getting the terms that are most meaningful to the business
ISSUES IN CLOUD MIGRATION
THE CLOUD
Infra Issues
Cloud runs on a shared infrastructure, so the arrangement is less
customized to a specific company’s requirements
May be more difficult to get to the root of performance problems, like
the unplanned outages → trade-off is cost vs control

ISSUES IN CLOUD MIGRATION